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From Accra and Algiers to Zanzibar and Zululand, Africans have wrested control of soccer from the hands of Europeans, and through the rise of different playing styles, the rituals of spectatorship, and the presence of magicians and healers, have turned soccer into a distinctively African activity. African Soccerscapes explores how Africans adopted soccer for their own reasons and on their own terms. Soccer was a rare form of “national culture” in postcolonial Africa, where stadiums and clubhouses became arenas in which Africans challenged colonial power and expressed a commitment to racial equality and self-determination. New nations staged matches as part of their independence celexadbrations and joined the world body, FIFA. The Confédération africaine de football democratized the global game through antiapartheid sanctions and increased the number of African teams in the World Cup finals. In this compact, highly readable book Alegi shows that the result of this success has been the departure of huge numbers of players to overseas clubs and the growing influence of private commercial interests on the African game. But the growth of women’s soccer and South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup also challenge the one-dimensional notion of Africa as a backward, “tribal” continent populated by victims of war, corruption, famine, and disease.

This concise scholarly biography is the first English-language book to tell the story of Paul Bonga-Bonga’s extraordinary sporting life in Congo and Belgium. The book is divided into three parts: Childhood and Youth, Adulthood, and Maturity. Part 1 focuses on Bonga-Bonga’s early years under Belgian colonial rule, his formative experiences in mission schools, and his emergence as a precocious soccer talent. Part 2 focuses on a booming Kinshasa in the 1950s, when he started first for Union and then for the popular Daring Club as a left-footed midfielder who mesmerized crowds in Africa’s largest stadium. After being scouted as a member of a Congolese all-star team that toured Belgium in 1957, he signed with Standard Liège in the Belgian first division. Part 3 analyzes Bonga-Bonga’s six seasons at Standard, where he contributed to the club’s first three league championships and played in the European Cup semifinals against Real Madrid. The last chapter chronicles his coaching accomplishments, notably his work as the first Black African licensed head coach in Belgium and as technical director of Zaire’s national team.

Against a backdrop of colonialism, independence, and globalization, this biography demonstrates how Bonga-Bonga’s achievements and struggles helped pave the way for today’s Afro-Belgian footballers. It does so by drawing on a rich set of written and oral evidence in multiple languages—including interviews with Bonga-Bonga himself—as well as photographs and vintage video footage. His lifelong movement between Congo and Belgium highlights the nonlinear nature of African migration and further deepens understanding of Congo’s underappreciated role in the cultural and economic globalization of soccer. Well suited for teachers, students, and general readers interested in sports, culture, and identity, this book deepens knowledge of African social change in a global context and connects to key themes in African studies and sports history, such as individual agency, migration, race and racism, masculinity, citizenship, and belonging. Bonga-Bonga’s sporting life is proof, if proof were still needed, that histories of modern Africa are incomplete without football.